Program for Writing and Rhetoric receives national award for excellence

The University of Colorado Boulder’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) has been awarded the Writing Program Certificate of Excellence, a national award conferred by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the world’s largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition.

“The University of Colorado Boulder’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric was chosen as an exemplar,” writes Chris Anson, CCCC Chair and University Distinguished Professor and Director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program at North Carolina State University. The selection committee especially praised the PWR’s small class sizes and leadership potential regarding “the direction [CU’s] program can provide to the field.”

With this national award the PWR joins a select group of college-level writing programs designated as a Writing Program of Excellence. PWR was one of five programs receiving the award this year.

The Program for Writing and Rhetoric is a freestanding unit in the College of Arts and Sciences at CU-Boulder and is responsible for campus-wide instruction in expository writing at the first-year and upper-division levels. Its small class sizes of 19 students provide intensive workshops and individualized instruction to help students to think critically about the texts they read and the writing they produce for both academic and professional audiences.

This is the second year in a row that a CU-Boulder writing program has received the Writing Program Certificate of Excellence designation. CU-Boulder’s McNeill Writing Program received the award last year.